1. A senator will tell us about how much he or she likes baseball, which apparently is as important in congressional protocol as standing for and singing the national anthem.

2. Bud Selig will nod his head and agree with just about everything a senator is saying, then jab a thumb in the direction of union head Don Fehr, as if to say: You got problems with us? Talk to that guy over there.

3. A senator will tell us about how he or she rooted for (Insert Team Here) as a kid — and then mispronounce the name of said team’s star player.

4. One of the Hall of Famers who will be part of the panel will be the star of the day, with a loud pronouncement about cleaning up steroids. We think it’s going to be Henry Aaron, a friend of Selig.

5. A senator will ask a question that was asked six or seven times before.

6. Selig will say, again, that he really didn’t become attuned to the issue of steroids until the summer of 1998 — a decade after 10 years after Ben Johnson had his gold medal stripped.

7. A senator will make a joke about a current pennant race, probably involving the great states of Illinois and Ohio, or the great states of New York and Massachusetts.

8. Fehr will defend, deflect, parry, dodge, and say about a dozen times that the current testing system is working — while retreating, all the while.

9. A senator will take three minutes to explain how he started collecting baseball cards as a kid, and how he’s still annoyed with his mother, God rest her soul, for throwing out the shoebox.

10. The effort to rid baseball of steroids will move glacially, again.

After watching the torturous start to today’s grandstanding-fest, I can only hope for John McCain’s sake that if he runs for President again that David Stern doesn’t oppose him.